The People that anger me the most: The "Independents" who voted for neither

Politics & Elections
217

Yeah, but you see many people simply don’t (or didn’t) believe this and not just the MAGA core. Mostly they think the system will hold and it might be a turbulent presidency, but not necessarily the final democratic presidency.

You can say those people are stupid, naive, gullible, ill-educated or poorly informed. But I’m pretty sure it’s a fact - tens of millions don’t believe fascism is coming or is here or was potentially at stake in the last election. They didn’t believe it when they were voting and many/most still don’t believe it now. To them it’s just more charged political rhetoric for them to shrug at and change the channel. Democracy may work better than anything else, but it is always vulnerable to demagogues, especially in times of economic pressure.

You can rail at them for being dumbasses who may have enabled fascism. But you can’t rail at them for deliberately voting for fascism (or not voting to defeat it), because they never believed that was at stake.

218

Agreed.

The word fascism is, among other things, an insult. So I’m sure that when they made their non-verbal-level decision to vote for Trump, their consciousness didn’t then process it as a vote for fascism.

They did perceive him as a strong patriotic leader.

If the Trump - Harris election was held today, I’m pretty sure that Harris would win. But it is not because a couple million of his voters now think he is a fascist, or even (as I do) just a regular strongman dictator. It’s because they think tariffs mean inflation.

219

I know and tbh I’m less mad at the section of the electorate who were genuinely uninformed about Trump’s fascism (I’m not not mad at them, there is plenty of blame to go round). But my white hot ire is reserved for those on the left who were politically informed, did know what was at stake but still chose Fascism.

220

Supporting Trump who will support the killing of those Gazans, and persecute those Arab voters themselves is a self destructive act. And there was no third option, nor was voting for their own disenfranchisement or worse going to get them one.

There’s nothing worthy of respect in people choosing to destroy themselves in a tantrum.

221

I think there is rather more to Angela Davis and the concept of racial/racialized fascism in the US. And rather more to the analysis offered at length by @Stranger_On_A_Train that outlines the decades-long slide to fascism there. Finally, I think Horkheimer’s observation that “those who do not speak of capitalism cannot speak of fascism” is important for it points to some of the reasons for the failure of the Democratic Party.

222

Counterpoint: Consider Jello Biafra’s observation on what Nazi punks should do

223

I disagree; equating fascism and capitalism encouraged left leaning people to dismiss warnings about fascism since it feeds directly into “bothsides” rhetoric. I got into plenty of arguments with people claiming that it didn’t matter if Trump got into power since “all of them are fascists”.

224

I think the point is rather fascism is latent in capitalism, rather than equating them, which I agree is a mistake and a dangerous one. But I also think it is the case that capitalism and fascism are connected, for historical and political reasons. But we’re not going work this out on a message board, I expect.

225

Fascism is something the wealthy often think is a great idea, but it’s not really capitalism and not at all friendly to capitalists. They are just too stupid to see that before the oligarchs start “falling out of windows”. They think it’ll make them richer and more powerful without realizing that they are destroying the system that gives them their power and privileges in the first place, and that wealth doesn’t give you power or protect you when all that matters is force.

226

But fascism “evolves” from capitalism in the sense that it is the authoritarian rule associated with that economic system. And Hitler did not abolish private corporations any more than Pinochet did or Trump will.

227

Back to talking about “Independent” choices though. I think (and this is very much IMHO) part of the problem is that whatever way they lean, they’re still likely to get news from the mass market. If they’re getting it from Fox, then, well, then, they’re going to get a fairy tale Trump that really does care about them, and the world will be fixed with cheap eggs in the proverbial two weeks.

If they’re getting their news from CNN, then they’re getting substantially sane-washed information where all the “checks and balances” will work to keep him in check, so what’s it matter, why vote?

As others in this thread have said, messaging is key to some, or I suspect many/most of the indifferent non-voters. The ones who are making some sort of “principled” stance by not-voting, write in, or third party, are probably a substantial minority. I still disagree with them, but again it’s the unmotivated who just don’t care that are a bigger problem, and probably unsolvable outside some sort of requirement to vote, which I suspect is a non-starter in the USA for a huge number of reasons.

228

It is rather mind boggling how people can claim that voting for a third party is a wasted vote because the person has no chance of winning, yet voting for the losing candidate of the two major parties somehow has some magically powerful effect that increases the value of the vote 1000-fold.

In both cases, the vote has no impact on the outcome. A vote is not “wasted” by voting for someone that isn’t going to win because a single vote doesn’t determine who is going to win. A vote is your voice. You direct your voice at what matters to you. If you want your voice to support libertarian ideals, so be it. If you want your voice to oppose Trump no matter what, so be it. If you want your vote to support Harris, so be it. Though a simple vote for Harris doesn’t make a voice very clear because it could mean you love Harris and everything she stands for, or it could me you despise her but only slightly less than Trump.

I would argue that a vote for a third party is less of a waste than a vote for the major two parties because the message it sends is at least slightly clearer than a vote for the two major parties (given how many people vote for the two major parties without actually supporting either, but simply because they like playing the lesser of two evils game).

Pretending voting to oppose whatever you think is wrong (in this case Trump) is somehow morally meaningful while not voting at all is terrible, even though they have the same impact on the election, seems pretentious at best. Every single one of us, no matter who we voted for (or didn’t vote for), had the same impact on the election. We all had one meaningless vote that had no impact at all. If you have the power to compel thousands of votes, then sure, your actions mean something. But if you are not an influencer or committing fraud, your vote had no impact just like mine and it really didn’t matter who you voted for.

229

So you’re claiming every vote that was cast for trump had no impact?

Time to rethink your thesis.

Every vote counts equally. The "single vote to determine the outcome’ thinking is mathematical garbage and morally politically vacuous.


How many grains of sand does it take to make a pile? If you remove one, is it still a pile? Think seriously about this.

230

Yeah. People want their vote to “matter”, individually but as I said earlier that can only happen when the number of votes is really tiny. In a society of hundreds of millions, democracy means that your vote is just one among those millions. It’s just inherent in the fact that there’s so many people that the desires of one individual don’t “matter” in that sense - unless they seize undemocratic levels of power at everyone else’s expense.

231

The “I want my vote to matter” crowd sound about like the 5yo kids that wants to play a board game or card game, but only if they win. Or stated more directly, if they can’t win they don’t want to play.

Which is child-thinking about the single most important act they will perform that year.

232

Because madmonk28’s description of “America needs to collapse” is an exaggeration of most of their beliefs. They want America to change significantly in a way that neither party is currently willing to do. A third-party win might bring this change but is unlikely to happen. The other option, and the much more likely option, is for one of the two parties to see that they are going to lose over and over unless they change something, and they move their platform. This is what most of the people that didn’t vote for Harris because she wasn’t progressive enough are hoping for.

The question these people have for the Democratic party is simple. How many times does Donald Trump (or someone just as bad) need to elected before you will nominate Bernie Sanders (or someone like him)? It is extremely common for normal Democrats to refer to this as burning everything to the ground, but these voters feel the same way about normal Democrats. By refusing to nominate a more liberal candidate you are burning everything to the ground (because the moderate will lose).

I have a friend that still, to this day, brings up the question, what part about “Bernie of Bust” was confusing? The message was clear. If the Democrats want to win, nominate Bernie. If the Democrats want the Republicans to win, nominate anyone else (this is what “Bust” meant). And yet, she is continually harassed by her party for not voting for Biden or Harris when they could have simply given her what she was demanding. Blue no Matter Who voters will vote for anyone. They may think Bernie is too extreme but will vote for him anyway. Bernie or Bust voters will not vote for anyone but Bernie. If you want all the votes of these two groups of people only Bernie is an acceptable candidate.

As someone that is not a member of either group (and not emotionally invested in the outcome), I can see her point. If I were to step in and try to manipulate all of you into working together, listening to her, rather than moderate Democrats that will vote for anyone that isn’t Trump, makes the most sense. And yet election after election Democrats like her are ignored.

So it goes back to the original question, how many times does Trump, or someone like him, need to win before the Democratic party will finally call on those voters that are just waiting in their back pocket to vote for them but keep getting ignored by selecting the wrong candidates? Republicans were willing to nominate their most extreme candidate 3 times in a row and he won twice. When will the Democrats realize that their more extreme candidates may be more likely to win than their more moderate ones?

That is the message they are sending by staying home or voting third party. It’s up to us whether we want to hear their message and do something about it or continue to pretend that everyone that didn’t vote or voted for anyone but Harris is the most evil, stupid, racist, (insert any other highly inaccurate falsehood based on total ignorance of anyone that doesn’t think just like us) person alive.

233

All votes collectively have value. Each individual vote has so little impact that, if you were to remove it by not voting, it would have no impact. Pretending my vote has meaningful impact just because all votes collectively have meaningful impact is disingenuous. I have said many times, if my vote has the ability to swing an election by causing millions of other votes to automatically change for the candidate of my choosing, then yes, I will take my vote seriously. For now, my vote is just my voice and not something that determines winners.

To put is another way, telling people that every vote counts is the right move. That is something that an influencer might say. By saying that, it may result in thousands or millions of additional people voting. But behind closed doors, when it comes to each of us as individuals, it doesn’t matter if we vote or not. We just need to not tell anyone about it as that might influence others and that influence might have an impact.

Influencing the masses to vote has an impact on elections. Each individual vote, including our own, has an impact so small you can safely round it to zero.

234

These people should learn exactly how the Democratic Party nominates candidates.

235

I voted for Bernie in the primaries. And I"m someone who was fine voting 3rd party to send the dems a message and force them to come back to me in future elections when the GOP opponent was Mitt Romney.

It should have been obvious in 2016 that Trump was a threat to democracy, so it wasn’t just about sending a message and hoping for a better candidate in 4 years. You were either pro-blowing up the American system or pro-keeping it alive. And I still contend that anyone who legitimately believed that it would be better to have someone like Trump actually blow it up they should have had the courage of their convictions and voted for him.

ETA:

No it wasn’t up to “us”. If it was up to me we would’ve nominated Bernie in 2016. I’m aware that I have basically no influence, so I did the grown-up thing and voted to prevent a fascist takeover.

And as I’ve said previously, I’m partly mad at the independents who stayed home or voted green or whatever because they aren’t actually racist and evil, they have relatively similar values to me, they just looked at the same options I have and made a dumb spite-based decision and if they still refuse to blame themselves at all then I’m mad at them for that.

236

But that leaves out the third group. Democratic/independent moderates who are not Blue No Matter What voters and will not vote for Bernie no matter what and just sit out . The question is do they outnumber the Bernie or Bust liberals? I am 100% convinced they did (or would have, eventually) in 2016 and on that your friend’s thesis founders.